December 02, 2009

New Study Examines How Law Schools "Adapt" to U.S News Rankings

The Law School Admissions Council sent out its most recent monthly
LSAC report series to the Libraries of LSAC member schools. The most
interesting one of the bunch is Fear of Failing: the Effects of U.S.
News & World Report Rankings on U.S. Law Schools, by Michael
Sauder, and Wendy Espeland. Love 'em or hate 'em, the rankings are a
fact of life for law schools. This report looks at the effect of the
USN rankings on legal education, and it's not peripheral.

From the Executive Summary:

One general effect of the USN rankings on law schools is that it has
created pressure on law school administrators to redistribute resources
in ways that maximize their scores on the criteria used by USN to
create the rankings, even if they are skeptical that this is a
productive use of these resources. This redistribution is illustrated
by two examples mentioned consistently by the administrators
interviewed: (a) increases in marketing expenditures aimed toward
raising reputation scores in the USN survey and (b) increases in merit
scholarships intended to improve the statistical profile of incoming
classes. A more subtle form of resource redistribution is also
described in this section: the adoption of strategies by some schools
to “game” the rankings.

Some forms of this redistribution comes in the forms of brochures
and other publications designed to enhance a school's reputation, which
is a full 40% of the ranking. Many administrators acknowledge that
many these enhancing publications are probably not read before being
recycled (go green!), but peer pressure makes them spend upwards of
$100,000 to produce and distribute these publications anyway. Library
volume count, by the way, represents 0.75% of the weight of an over all
score. That explains much more as to why academic law libraries are
hardly ever enhanced with an eye to the rankings.

Schools game the system by giving out financial aid to students with
high LSAT scores as a way of bringing in a higher quality metric to the
entering class and student body as a whole. Some schools create
part-time or probationary programs to keep the academically weaker
students off the books. Student quality (LSAT, GPA) is 12.5% of the
full ranking. Things such as need-based scholarships, enhancements to
programs, improved quality to areas of the school not affecting the
rankings all tend to take a back seat at the most rankings-obsessed
schools. The pressure on admissions and career services offices is
tremendous. Schools put up with it because potential students do take
rankings seriously. Rankings even affects faculty recruitment and the
ability of faculty to publish in quality journals. While none of this
is a surprise, the report is a nice compilation of how schools have
adapted their budgets and practices to account for their survey
information. There is also a nice table that breaks down the ranking
standards and weights.

The report is available on the LSAC site.
Because of the way the site is constructed, there is no direct URL.
However, anyone interested in finding it should start at the main LSAC
page, click on Research Data from the menu bar running across the top
of the screen, roll over the graphic for Research and select Grant
Reports. The report should be available from the page that comes up.
It's numbered GR-07-02. [MG]